Then
directly after that she fancied that there came from her father's
room above the thud of some sudden fall or collapse. She listened.
The bell swallowed all other noise. She thought that she had been
mistaken, but the tapping at the window began again, now insistent;
the church bell suddenly stopped and in the silence that followed
one could hear the slight creak of some bough driven by the sea-wind
against the wall.
The curtains were not drawn and where the curve of the hill fell
away the sky was faintly yellow; some cold stars like points of ice
pierced the higher blue; carelessly, as though with studied
indifference, flakes of snow fell, turning grey against the lamp-lit
windows, then vanishing utterly. Maggie, going to the window, saw a
dark shapeless figure beyond the glass. For an instant she was
invaded by the terror of her surprised loneliness, then she
remembered her father and the warm kitchen, then realised that this
figure in the dark must be her Uncle Mathew.
She went out into the hall, pushed back the stiff, clumsy handle of
the door, and stepped on to the gravel path. She called out,
laughing:
"Come in! You frightened me out of my life.
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